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with Helena the critic only finds fault on account of her love for Bertram.„The poet must have had another opinion with regard to one and the other, else he would probably not have written the play“.(Delius). Kreyssig also remarks that the action of this comedy is as weighty, as the laws of this kind of poetry will allow in any way, and that it con- tains situations in which tragical dissonances could as easily be arrived at by the poet, as the happy solution, really given. Accordingly he finds that the delineation of the cha- racters is treated very carefully.

With the poet's power in characterization also his skill in forming a plot is growing, and generally this two qua- lities of a play are discussed in conjunction as criterion of the place due to it in chronological order.„In the structure of the play and grouping of charactey is, in some of the early plays a tendency to formal symmetry, an artificial setting of character over against character, and group against group: Antipholus and Dromio against Antipholus and Dro- mio; Proteus and Launce against Valentine and Speed: the King of Navarra and his three fellow-students against the Princess of France and her three ladies. Afterwards the outline of the play is drawn with a freer, because a firmer hand“(Dowden).

But also in the estimation of the merit of the plot, the creation and grouping of the persons engaged in it, cele- brated critics differ relatively to some of Shakespeare's plays. Aesthetic criticism plays a prominent part. What is the central idea of the piece? That is a question which even critics who mock at our German theorists cannot get rid of. According to the answer, the propriety of the grouping of persons, of scenes, the right of existence of persons is judged, and chronology is made.

Speaking of All's well, Ulrici, who thinks the play one of Shakespeare’s earlier works, says:„The composition also is not as successful as in most of his later comedies; several. characters, such as the Countess and the Duke of Florence, Lafeu and Parolles, Violenta and Mariana do indeed take